OCTOBER 11, 1955

NEW YORK—In the current issue of Life Magazine there is an editorial on the Till case which
is an appeal to the conscience of all our people. The editorial says, quite rightly,
that human justice often falls far short of being justice, but that divine justice
sooner or later is meted out to all of us according to our just dues.

After reading this editorial I think the jury that allowed itself to be persuaded
that no one had really found and identified the body—though it was granted that a
boy had disappeared but the body found might not be his—and, therefore, the accused
men could not be convicted or punished in any way, will find their consciences troubled.

It is true that there can still be a trial for kidnapping, and I hope there will be.
I hope the effort will be made to get at the truth. I hope we are beginning to discard
the old habit, as practiced in a part of our country, of making it very difficult
to convict a white man of a crime against a colored man or woman.

I remember a train trip I made many years ago between Atlanta and Warm Springs, Georgia.
I was with my husband. At one point we were delayed for a long time, and later we
heard that a white man had shot a colored man on the train. Both of us were upset,
and we asked if the white man had been arrested.

"Oh, no," we were told, "but he might later come up for trial."

Months later I was driving my husband through the county seat near Warm Springs when
he pointed out to me a white man standing on the corner near the courthouse, and said
with a wry smile, "There is the man who delayed us so long that day on the train.
He is as free as he ever was, though the colored man is dead."

I never forgot this incident, but now it has taken on added meaning. I know everywhere
in this country we must prove that what we say about equality before the law for every
American citizen is a reality and not a myth.

The colored peoples of the world, who far outnumber us, will watch the Till case with
interest, and if justice in the United States is only for the white man and not for
the colored, we will have again played into the hands of the Communists and strengthened
their propaganda in Africa and Asia.

At the recent meeting in San Francisco commemorating the signing of the United Nations Charter, a suggestion was made—I think
by Israel—that a statue should be placed in San Francisco harbor to parallel in a
way the Statue of Liberty, which everyone coming into New York harbor looks at with
warm affection and gratitude. Now I have a letter from Arthur Robinson, of Volcano,
California, saying that this statue should be a statue of justice and placed on Alcatraz
Island, from which, he believes, the prison is shortly to be moved.

Mr. Robinson suggests that the money raised by groups like his own and those in San
Francisco might well be supplemented by money coming from every United Nations member
state, and he wants to get the project going because he feels that it should "catch
fire in the hearts and minds of free men everywhere." It might be a reminder to us
as a nation that we stand as the symbol of democracy to the world, and that equal
justice is looked upon as one of the essential parts of democracy.

If every citizen of our country were conscious of this, there might be no more juries
such as sat at the first trial of the Till case.